InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Like a brother? "

HEAD COUNCIL (headcouncil) wrote,
@ 2008-01-03 16:03:00

The Rules.

Due to the level of writing required, players must be 16 years of age or older to join.
If you are not 16 years of age, please do not apply. You will not be accepted.

Character Creation Rules

This is an original character game only! No celebrities or fandom characters will be allowed. Period.

No god-like characters will be allowed. Be sensible with their limits. Have a realistic character with realistic abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and limits. All species have their limits listed on the Guidelines for Playable Species page.

Please do not hesitate to talk to us and ask for help! If you need help completing the Application, contact the mods at helicharis.council(at)gmail(dot)com! We’ll be glad to give you whatever pointers or extra information you need to complete your application. Make sure your questions aren't answered elsewhere first by reading all of the information pages thoroughly.

Before we will accept you into the game, you must post your character’s bio either in their userinfo or somewhere in their journal with a link to it in the userinfo. You only have to include the “Character Information” part of the application. You do not have to post the “Other Information” or “Your Information” parts.

Players may only apply for one character at a time. You must be active with that character for a reasonable amount of time before we will allow you to have another.

Multiple characters per player are allowed. Only apply for as many characters that are feasible for you to have the time to play. If you are not active with the characters you currently have, you will not be allowed another until you become active again with ALL of your characters. The amount of characters you are allowed are up to the mods. The majority of players in our game vary between 1 to 3 total.

Having one active character will not save you from losing another inactive character of yours. Yes, this is why we tell people to be feasible with the amount they have. You have to be active with ALL of them. If you have 3 characters and only 1 is active, you will lose the other 2 if you do not make them active again. Non-played characters are NOT ALLOWED here.

Player Rules

God-modding is disallowed. No controlling the actions of another character unless you are given express permission from the player. This includes little things such as them standing up or sitting down. Only control your own character’s actions!

Mature Content: This is not an adult game, but there may be the occasional posts with mature adult content, including violence, sexual content, and use of foul language. If you are uncomfortable with such material, you have the choice to stay away and not read it. No one is forcing you to look at it if it bothers you. All such material will have a warning and be placed under an lj-cut out of sight. As such, anyone under the age of 18 years old may NOT post, or engage in posts, involving mature sexual content.

Age-Limit for Posting Mature Sexual Content: There is an age limit for making any posts or comments that contain mature sexual content. If you are below 18 years of age, you will not be allowed to post, or engage in posts, with such material. The mods will be strictly enforcing this rule.

OOC Conflict: It does happen. If you have reason to believe another player is acting out against you in-game, or especially if they have expressed such feelings in an OOC manner, try to talk to them about it. Be the adult. Sometimes people just need to talk to each other. If they will not talk to you, please contact the mods. Do not let a problem like this get out of hand. We will help the two of you to find even ground in what ways we can to sort out the conflict. We will not play favorites, so do not hesitate to talk to us or think that we will not listen to you, even if we know the other person involved quite well. All that matters is who is purposefully instigating trouble. If it is such a big issue that players cannot work it out and it comes to affect the whole game, the mods will take whatever action they deem necessary for the situation. This will include removing one or both of the players, depending on who is instigating IC conflict over the OOC matter.

Hiatus / Leaving / Inactivity:
- LEAVING: When leaving the game, contact the mods and let us know if you can. Don’t just disappear! Let us know so we can sort everything out sooner rather than later.
- HIATUS: You are allowed to take a hiatus! Life gets hectic, and we understand that. If your hiatus lasts longer than a month, you will be contacted via e-mail each month that your hiatus continues. As long as you reply and say you plan to stay within the game, your character will remain in the game until you tell us to remove your character or you do not reply to our e-mails. After six months, however, you will be removed permanently should you not return to an active state within the game. You can always re-apply later with the same character and be brought back into the game.
- INACTIVITY: Inactivity is judged on a monthly basis as well. If your character(s) are inactive for a month, we will contact you via email. You’ll have two weeks to reply. If we receive no response, your character and you will be removed from the game at the mods’ discretion.
READ ALL OF THE INFORMATION PAGES THOROUGHLY!!!

Posting Rules

Community Posting Format: You may do narrative scenes with just your character, narrative/snippet scenes with multiple characters, or full scenes with other characters. These posts must be in 3rd person and past tense. You must also include this information at the beginning of your post:
Who: (Name the characters who will be in the post.)
When: (Time of day. Doesn’t have to be specific. You could say “Morning” or “Sunset.”)
Where: (Pick a location where it takes place.)
What: (Description of what is going on in the post.)
- Example of a narrative post, involving only one character:
  Who: John [Narrative]
  When: Evening
  Where: Beside the Freshwater Lake
  What: Reminiscing about his father.
- Example of an open post:
  Who: John and OPEN
  When: Evening
  Where: Beside the Freshwater Lake
  What: Reminiscing about his father.
There are two communities for 3rd person posting, whether it's a single character or a group of people.
- nosuchplace: The community for present-day posts. The subject line must include the day and date as we provide them in Day Announcements, such as “Wednesday: August 22, 2007” if that is the date in-game. The majority of your posting will be done to this community, as this is the only community you where are required to actively post. All current events in the game go here!
- nosuchtimes: The community for history posts that take place before your character came to Elysium. History posts that take place before current game-time will be posted here. It is not mandatory to post to this community at all. It’s just there if you wish to flesh out past events with your character to help give their story more color. The subject line must include the name of the character or characters involved in the post OR a date. You must also include the Who, When, Where, and What at the beginning of the post as well.

OOC Posts: All OOC posts must go into the OOC community thebadplace. This community is locked.

Character Journals: Among the things character journals are used for include 1st person handwritten and non-interactive journal entries, sending out handwritten notes to other characters, and sending out gifts to other characters. All things posted to character journals are hand-written things since there is no computer technology in this game. For example, a personal journal entry would be unreadable by other characters because it is a real paper journal your character keeps in their room or home and uses a pen or pencil to write inside of it. Other characters may not comment on 1st person journal entries as these are private and other characters will not have access to them. You are not required to post to your character’s journal, but if you aren’t posting elsewhere, posting to your character’s journal will keep you active. Only IC posts are allowed on the character journals.
- For sending out notes and gifts to other characters, you may format it however you like and use graphics if you so wish. Just remember to lj-cut large images!

Posting Frequency: To keep the game and its plots continuing at a steady pace, players are asked to post something in-game at least once during every 2 or 3 game days. A game day lasts generally 4 real days, so every 8 to 12 real days. This doesn’t necessarily mean threading with someone else. You can post a narrative to continue your character’s plot, post a new comment in a thread you are in, do a journal entry for your character, or send notes to other characters. Just remember to keep your character active in some way.

No friends-locking entries. People cannot follow along with the RPG when there are friends-locked entries. Do not friends-lock entries on the main community.

Type of Writing: Creative writing style required for all posts with all actions, conversations, and thoughts written out. We expect players to write out descriptive, informative, and interesting scenes. Reading the character’s stories should be fun. We would like for the community to be engaging to read as if you are cracking open your favorite book. Yes, grammar and spelling are also important.

Length of Replies:
- Commenting Over the Communities: Comments are required to be of sustenance. Quality is better than quantity, but do give other players something to work with! Five to eight sentences is simply NOT enough. Your reply should at the least be somewhere between two to four paragraphs with the average paragraph consisting of at least eight sentences or more. We expect quality replies at this game, and the mods will contact you if you begin posting comments that are too short.
- Scening Over AIM or Other Chat Features: The length of your replies to each other, if you are making a log, are up to your discretion. Short replies always work better with logging! However, you must still remember to give your partner something of quality to work with.

Threading with Other Players: Scenes may be threaded out with the character of another player in many formats. Choose one that best suits you. Outside of posting in the commenting format on the communities, we allow scenes to be RPed via instant messenger programs (such as AIM), e-mail, PMs, and Google Docs. These formats must be edited and posted as one entry; if the entry is longer than eight paragraphs, please put the rest of it under an lj-cut. If you don't like one format, don't worry! We don't have restrictions on what formats you can use to write out scenes with other people.

Italics: Italics can only be used for emphasizing a word or phrase, thoughts, or words in other languages that you wish to write out in English to avoid translating them at the bottom of your post. No one wants to see italics everywhere! It can give a headache.

Non-English: If you include your character speaking or writing in any language other than English in a post, you must leave a translation in English within the same post at the bottom or under an lj-cut with an explanation that it is an English translation.

Mature Content Warnings: We allow mature content, such as sex and violence, to be posted. Please mark them as such with a warning and put them underneath a cut. You do not need to friends-lock such entries, but you must give a warning and lj-cut them. No exceptions.

Example of a mature content post:
Who: John and Jane
When: Night
Where: The Water Bungalows
What: Romantic meeting under the stars.
WARNING: Mature sexual content!

Heterosexuality, Bisexuality, and Homosexuality: We are friendly towards all of these, but we are staying somewhat realistic with the amount of each. There is a limit on how much of the total population that can be homosexual/bisexual. There are specific caps on the males and females separately to make them equal.

Metagaming is disallowed. This means using OOC information IC. If private things happen between two characters, your character cannot know about it unless she/he has been told about it through someone who did see it, or he/she has seen it themselves. Your character is not allowed to magically know information she/he has no means of finding out. Just because you know something as a player doesn’t mean your character knows that information as well. You will be warned if you are found doing this.